The key to the game's appeal, the creepiness of the setting aside, is the neighbour's intelligence. That first intrusion always ends in capture – its purpose is to tease the basement that is your ultimate objective in this build – but once it's finished, you're breaking and entering for real. The continuity is important because it's where the seeds of the game's possible appeal are planted.

Maybe the glimpse of the basement was all a dream. There's some continuity between one 'life' and the next so I don't think it's a case of starting fresh as if the capture never happened. I'm not sure if an explanation is needed as to what happens in between capture and awakening, but none is given at the moment.

His hands around your throat.Īnd then you wake up in bed, in your fake plastic home. As soon as you approach the basement, there's a jarring musical sting and the neighbour is there, reaching for you. And so, you pop in, not to borrow a cup of sugar or offer a helping hand, but to snoop and pry. That first entry marks the only narrative context in this very early build – from your own home, you can see a red glow coming from the basement of the house across the street, and the front door has been left open. Mostly chin and muscle, he's first seen in what I'd loosely describe as a jumpscare, appearing behind you the first time you enter the house. He looks like a retired circus strongman, the neighbour. I think it's because the map is unfinished but in my head canon, the whole building is a fake, hastily constructed so that the burly fellow across the street can be monitored by oppressive government agencies. You're in your house, which looks full-sized but is apparently just a tiny bedroom and even tinier hallway. There's no backstory yet, nor even any objectives or instructions. The pre-alpha build, which is available to download as of yesterday, doesn't provide a great deal of context as to why you decide to go snooping around in the house of the chap who lives across the street, but that is precisely what you must do. Or an intrusive offspring of the surveillance state. Hello Neighbor is a first-person stealth horror game in which you play as a concerned citizen.

Or the time when I hid in a wardrobe and tried to lean so that I could peek through a crack in the door only to find myself leaking slowly through that crack and directly into the neighbour's line of sight. I'm thinking of the time the chase music began while I was in my own home and the neighbour's face pressed against the window suddenly as he tried to run through it to murderise me. Not because of any great qualities in the design, but rather because some of my favourite things about it might get 'fixed'. You can play Hello Neighbor right now, for free, and I strongly suggest that you do.

Hello neighbor pre alpha house